A Low-High Week of Recovery

I'm glad I decided to give myself at least another week to recuperate from surgery before taking on any more activities in my search for 'youth'. The week has been very up and down.

Monday - When physical therapy came to my home, she marveled at how well I was walking, graduated me from laying down & sitting down exercises to sitting up and standing up exercises. Yea for me! My flexibility measured from 3 degrees to 98 degrees. Almost straight to past a right angle. Another yea!

Tuesday - I felt stiff. The muscles in my 'new' knee just didn't want to bend, and I knew I wasn't walking as well as I had been, but didn't know what I'd done 'wrong'.

Wednesday - PT came and confirmed that my knee was not bending much because it was so swollen from water retention. My flexibility began at 7 degrees--we didn't go any further than that, it was so depressing. After helping me through a workout, she piled pillows and folded blankets on my bed and told me to lay down at least twice a day for an hour with my legs propped up on that stack. A miserable day, but hopefully it would not keep going like that much longer.

Thursday - I knew as soon as I woke up that this was my 'Magic Depression' day. The way I understand it, at some point after surgery, all the left-over operating meds finally drain out of your body, and that change in chemistry makes you severely depressed. This was the day to check in with my General Practitioner, and I groused my way through that office visit. It's a good thing my doc has a sense of humor and great patience with his patients. I apparently had not picked up any nasty germs for him to attend to, so I was sent home. I kept telling my son I just wanted to 'punch out the day and go to bed'. I did spend quite a bit of time in bed - feet properly raised - but I never figured out how to punch the day out.

Friday - much better! Pain was pretty negligible, legs were the proper size. When PT came, my flexibility went from 2 degrees to 104 degrees! Yea for me!. The exercises were tiring, but I managed to up the number of repetitions I did, plus add a new exercise. Yea for me again! I was feeling so good that when the phone rang, and the hand unit wasn't at my desk, I got up and walked to the next room to answer it - without my walker! I managed it, but doing it wore me out so much, I went to bed around 7:30 that night. I didn't feel a bit guilty about it, because I'm still recovering.

I still have about a week before I get my staples removed, and we don't know how much more physical therapy I'll need, but I should be able to drive after that. Yipee! Now I can finally go to the store and get that bag of potatoes we haven't had these past 2 weeks.

Now that I'm through the major part of recovery, what do I tackle this week? Something that won't demand a lot of my time, because I'm still doing PT, still progressing towards full strength. I'm going to concentrate on brushing my teeth, something I usually forget more often than I remember.

What's Next?

Colored my hair. Check.

Got my knee replaced. Check.

What's the next thing for me to do in my Battle Against Age?

It's a long list, with lots of things for me to do, new habits to establish. Which one should I do now?

Actually, this past week has been a bit of a wake-up for me. I've known for a long time that you can't just wave a majic wand and everything is changed, your life is now hunkey-dorey. It takes weeks of actively deciding to do one thing, day after day, before doing that thing becomes a habit. And once you have achieved that habit, you can start to establish the next habit you want.

So I've had a busy week. Surgery on Monday, return home on Thursday, and I'm still on pain meds, still need help from my family for even the littlest things, like putting ice around my leg, helping me get socks on.

In my few moments of being fairly lucid this past week, I pondered what I could tackle next week. The entire household is kind of like standing on its head, and I want to add one more complication to it? Am I TRYING to fail?

No, I'm not. And there's no rule that says I have to tackle something new if I'm not finished with something else. Yes, the surgery is done, but my body is still recuperating. I check in with doctors on the 13th, the 12th and the 15th. In the meantime, I need to concentrate on my physical therapy, my spirits and just getting myself back to healthy. A healthy me will be so much better than the pre-surgery me or the still-recovering me.

That's my chore for the next week, and probably longer than that; to continue to recover. Because there are no magic wands, and some chores cannot be accomplished in a week or less.

Sick and Tired

Call me Tumie.

Might as well, my tummy is so large, I look 10 1/2 or 12 months pregnant. I am 60 years old, 5'2", 260 pounds, and about to get my 2nd knee replaced because there is no cartilage left in it. Having made those arrangements for the surgery, I went out of town for most of May, trying to relax for a time rather than get nervous waiting.

While at that vacation resort, it didn't take me long to realize I was unhappy with myself. Each glance in a mirror revealed a morbidly obese old woman, whose brown hair was drab and revealing quite a bit of gray. My face was developing jowls and tiny wrinkles that would not stay tiny for long.

I should have a lot more useful and fun years left. My grandmother lived to 99. But I wasn't going to get those years if I didn't address these problems I saw in myself. What was I going to do?

The first thing I did was color my hair. That was an immediate change that I could see with every glance at the mirror, and served as a promise to myself that other changes were under way, changes that would not be visible right away.

Other things I did:

1. Started going to the resort pool and working out. A lot of walking back and forth in chest-high water, which relieved a lot of the weight bearing down on my knees and also offered resistance. By the time I left for the trip home, I could feel the difference in how far I could walk before I needed to rest.

2. I read a fitness magazine, which I was afraid would make me even more depressed about my condition. But I did find a few snippets of things I could do to help my body. For instance, for each pound I weigh, I should be drinking an ounce of water each day. 260 pounds, 260 ounces, which is just over 2 gallons, which I guarantee you I have not been getting.

3. When I went to my pre-surgery physical, I discovered my doctor's office had a dietician in the same building, so I made an appointment that very day. She's going to help me figure out how to 'balance' my diet, and once I get the okay to go to the gym again, we'll tackle adding exercise to my routine.

So many of these processes take a long time to see any progress. I don't expect miracles, but by keeping this blog as a trail of what I have done, I'm hoping it will help me stay on the path. If my tale of a (probably rocky) trail to better health helps others face their issues, that would be the icing on my (imaginary) cake.